Urology service at Wycombe Hospital

30 September 2010

Buckinghamshire Healthcare would like to reassure people that there are no plans to close the urology ward at Wycombe Hospital or make any changes that will affect the specialist services we provide or patient care. Nationally, the requirement for acute hospital beds is changing; this is because more and more patients can now be seen as day cases and there are improvements to care available within the community. At our Trust, almost 85% of patients requiring surgery are now seen and able to go home the same day. In addition, we have recently opened additional community beds at Amersham Hospital. These improvements have allowed us to refocus what happens on our acute wards at Wycombe and Stoke Mandeville Hospitals.
 
The urology ward at Wycombe Hospital is frequently under-utilised, with approximately a quarter of beds empty at any one time. We have previously used these beds for medical patients who are now able to be transferred to our community hospitals as the most appropriate place for their care. Our intention now, as part of a wider review of our surgical treatment centre, is to use these beds for other surgical patients who require specialist care. Our urology ward, as one of our surgical wards within the treatment centre, is a clinically appropriate place for them to be. Using the beds in this way, will by no means impact on the care provided to urology patients, they will still be seen and treated by specialist urology doctors and nurses. It will also have no impact on any accreditation the department has. In addition, any equipment purchased via fundraising will still be available and used by the department.
 
It is important, particularly in these economically-challenged times nationally, that we make the best use of our facilities and workforce. However, patient quality and safety remains our highest priority and any changes we make are fully risk-assessed by our chief nurse and medical director. By making best use of the urology ward we have also been able to increase staffing levels and introduce new training for them, we believe this will improve the overall quality of care for our surgical patients.  
 
As a Trust we are proud of the urology service we provide and we will continue to develop this speciality. 

ENDS.

Notes to editors:

•   Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust provide a wide range of high quality acute and community services from three acute hospital sites in Amersham, Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe, five community hospitals at Thame, Marlow, Buckingham, Chalfonts and Gerrards Cross and Waterside, and a number of community sites across the county. Details of these can be found here: http://www.buckinghamshirehospitals.nhs.uk/community-health-services.htm

•   Specialist services include our regional dermatology, allergy and skin cancer centre, burns care and plastics sub-regional centre, cardiac services and the National Spinal Injuries Centre

•   More than 6,000 staff serve residents across Buckinghamshire, Thame (Oxfordshire), Tring (Hertfordshire) and Leighton Buzzard (Bedfordshire) - a combined population of 500,000. It serves a much larger population, 1.5m, for burns and plastic services and 14m for spinal injuries

•   On 1 April 2010 Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust became the new partner to Community Health Buckinghamshire.

For further information, contact the communications team on 01494 734959 or at communications@buckshosp.nhs.uk